Today's health care facilities include a wide range of establishments, from small and relatively simple medical clinics to large and complex hospitals. All together, health care facilities use a large amount of products for treating patients having various health conditions. In some instances, it is required to keep track of products that have been used for treatment, or installed within patients, to ensure compatibility or to readily be able to contact patients for product recalls. More particularly, in large hospitals, keeping track of such products that have been used on or installed within patients is a challenge, as it is performed manually, requires filling in multiple forms and is thus time consuming and requires a certain discipline from the part of both practitioners and personnel.
Efficient ways of monitoring product usage in health care facilities have been disclosed for product replenishment purposes. In Canadian application 2,587,186, there is disclosed a system and method for automatically alerting hospital supply personnel when the amount left of a given individually packed product is below a threshold. According to an aspect, each individually packed product has an identification label affixed to its package, as the product is used, the package is discarded into a garbage bin that is equipped with a label scanner. When the package of the product is scanned, the bin is adapted to transmit to a central server data indicative of the product's identification label. The central server then, according to the transmitted data, calculates and updates a database with the number of packed products that are left over. When the number of the particular packed product drops below a product specific threshold, the central server transmits an alert to a designated supply personnel for him to take action at replenishing the supply of the particular product that is about to run out.
However, prior art systems for monitoring products in health care facilities do not allow the automatic tracking of products that have been used for treatment or inserted within a patient in particular.